I keep coming back to this, I know, but I do think the Renaissance has a lot to offer an rts game. Unfortunately I am far more of a historian then I am a graphic designer. I have drawn up a couple plans for such a mod, but I do not possess the talent to do anything with them.

If I remember right, the original plan for the map had the map divided into various "provinces". Perhaps in each Province a local mercenary unit could be made available. A non-playable general faction, just for circumstances such as these (rebel slaves, bandits, ect.) like the Gaia faction in AoE II or the Slaves/Rebels of RTW, could be added and the slave army of the Servile Wars composed of the mercenary units that would be available in the Italian provinces.

I also wouldnt mind seeing more of the Romans. Have any screenshots of the Romans in formation? Hmm, now that the topic of formations is in my mind, do you think the maniple formation could be put into use by players or is it too impractical for a game?

How about Persians vs. Greeks? Have a shot of a host of Persian infanty bearing down on a Macedonian phalanx with the cavalry close behind. Do you have any hero units yet? If so you could include Alexander and his hetairoi and Darius III and the Immortals, perhaps in a depiction of a historical battle like Gaugamela or Issos.

The problem with factions in a game that covers such a vast period of time (come on, 500 years for one part is a rather long time) is whether or not to go with states or nationalities- for example, the Greeks could be considered a single nationality or culture, but between 500 BC and 0AD there were many states within that nation, the Athenians, the Spartans, the Thebans, Corinthians, Epirotes, Macedonians ect. ect., which rose and fell within that period. Or it could go the other way where within one state there were many nations- within the Persian Achaemenid Empire there were Perisans, Medes, Arabians, Turks, Thracians, even some Indians and Greeks. 0ad seems to have gone for a combination of both.

Nice thoughts, but in all honesty does anyone here really want to be fretting about which horses to breed when the enemy army is slaughtering your villagers and decimating your army? A lot of the ideas here to improve accuracy are nice, but much of it is impractical and would seriously interfere with gameplay. If many of these things were put into the game players would be so beset by many minor matters that they wont be able to focus on military strategy which is what this game is really about. You cannot combine RTS, RPG and City-building into a single game.

I see. Of course, or at least this is my understanding of history, the military reforms under Camillus and Marius focused on the organization of the army, while the equipment changes took place gradually over time. I believe even in the Imperial era the distinctions of hastati, principes and triari remained, if only honorary (denoting the length of service or something like that) rather then separate units. So the civil war under Sulla and the conquests of Caesar will be put off until Part two?

Part One would only deal with the "early" legions, while Part Two would have the classic "Augustan" legions. It is the latter that mastered the testudo formation. The legionary of the late Republic would have worn a montefortino helmet and ring-mail armour while carrying an oval shield, like so: The segmented cuirass armour was not commonly employed before 10AD. Same goes for the rectangular shield. Also, it is probable that the gladius sword, even until Caesar's day, was somewhat longer then that of the Imperial era.